Yakkety Yak After Action

A pair of Yak-7s, nicely painted by Misc. Minis

Yesterday for the Check Your 6! Southwestern Ohio group I ran a strictly hypothetical encounter, which featured the Yak-7 vs. the Heinkel He 100 (and found on the Downloads page and entitled Yakkety Yak). 

The scenario calls for five players, but since this encounter is a figment of my imagination, one could remove two of the Yak-7s, or add a pair of Heinkels, just to have a little fun or to adjust to the number of available players (we usually give a pair of planes to each player).

It is a bit of a bounce on bounce scenario, with four Heinkels closing on a pair of Yaks. A few random turns later four Yaks drop down from the clouds practically on top of the Germans.

The first game's initial setup

We ran the scenario twice as the first game was a rather short affair. The aircrew quality really showed through, but also the poor robustness rolls led to the destruction of three Yaks within the first handful of turns. So we changed the aircrew qualities with random die rolls, which yielded a result of all crews being skilled. This, on top of the Soviet "rabbits" changing tactics in the second game from running to turning into his foe, made for a heck of a game. The German players really danced about the board, and they had to due to being outnumbered 3:2. One turn saw the Yaks clustered together, and I thought the Germans would have a tough time the next turn. I took my pair of Heinkels and dover through and below the reversing Soviets, which also brought the other pair of Heinkels into a pair of perfect firing solutions. Our dice were fairly meh, but it did scatter the Yaks, and caused some damage. After seventeen turns, with one Yak shot down and another suffering an airframe damage (and one other running out of ammo) we called the game. No damages to the Heinkels resulted in a German victory.

The "rabbits" - my pair of Heinkels, have dove through the Yaks...

...setting up a pair of nice opportunities for the remaining Heinkels

And then the dance really begins with a decent amount of separation

Jamie obtains another great firing solution, but Mr. Robusto (Matt) makes his rolls

I tweaked the aircrew ratings a bit and have uploaded the revised version of Yakkety Yak. It was a fun game (both games for me - I had three kills in the abbreviated first game).

Yak-7s - Raiden Miniatures painted by Misc Minis.

He 100s - Table Top Flights painted by me, decals are Scale Specialties.

Mat - Deep Cut Studio.

The VF-27 Scenarios

What follows is the aircraft mix needed for the seven scenario outlines I have cobbled together featuring the Hellcats of VF-27, calling this group of scenarios "The "Cat's Mouth" Killers of VF-27." Not a huge number or variety of planes are required, and these scenarios are ideal for 2-6 players (typically I run games with two planes per player). I will probably just order the requisite fighters as I do not need six Jills for just one game - seems to be a waste of money and waste of time to paint them. However the Judys are useful for other Hellcat scenarios from the Desperate Measures scenario book, so I might also add those to my next Flight Deck order - plus it is a different looking aircraft for a Japanese design.

Blog Slows

Just a little update - after a prolific 2025 my blog posts in 2026 have slowed to a crawl. I've had a few Civil War presentations and tours already this year which require some preparation time, including a trip to the Fort Donelson Symposium where I led a tour and did a talk, and then there is the dad issue. About a month ago he was hospitalized. After a week of clearing his lungs and controlling his blood pressure, he spent nearly three weeks in a rehab facility to work on strength. Now he has been in an independent living apartment for almost two weeks, and it has been a chore. Not only organizing the move and getting him settled, but his memory, almost overnight, has been severely impacted. The facility is beautiful - new, with plenty of excellent amenities, but dad seems to also find the negative in every aspect. And the incessant phone calls (called me over 60 times when I was in Tennessee, always wanting to go "home" even though he knows he can't due to his need for having others around) and worn me, and more importantly to me, my wife down to a frazzled edge. So I have not had the energy to paint, decal, or post, let alone to get a game or two in. There is the constant running to his house (45 minutes away) and then visiting him. By the time I get home, I'm done mentally for the day. Also, the weather has prevented me from priming many planes over the winter, but now the weather is improving I at least will be able to work on that task.

I do keep working on research, having created scenario outlines featuring the F6F Hellcat, including a few featuring VF-27 as I have the excellent Scale Specialties decal sheet which includes the distinctive cat face of the squadron. What I also like about VF-27 is the fairly late war use of the three color scheme before morphing into the overall glossy dark sea blue, and they were using both schemes the day the USS Princeton, their carrier, was sunk. The three color paint scheme is not so daunting to me, having worked on some early war Wildcats and Buffalos - same colors, with the addition of the band of dark blue to the upper surfaces.

To pull off the seven VF-27 scenarios I only need four Hellcats (more accurately it would be four -3 and four -5 models, but at 1/285 scale who is counting?), six A6M5s, four Oscars (I already have several later model Ki-43s), four Judys, and six Jills. Flight Deck does make all the planes needed (well, they offer just the -3 Hellcat, but at this scale...).